The one thing that last week's power cuts by Eskom demonstrated (I'm not going for the Orwell newspeak of 'load shedding', let's call it what it is), was how resilient we are actually as South Africans and how we can laugh about being 'kept in the dark' by the powers that be. From SMSes, MMSes, viral emails, songs, videos, Facebook posts and banter, the jokes kept coming. And many of us made do. We had a cooldrink instead of a coffee at the café, we worked at home until our laptop batteries ran out and then we decamped to hotels. When their power went out, the office was back, we moved on. Yes, there were lots of people fuming on radio talkshows, but let's not forget that many in our country and our continent have lived without power for most of their lives and for many of our neighbouring countries, this is par for the course. You get a generator at work, uninterrupted power supply (UPS) in the office, gas and solar panels at home... you adapt. And that is what we as South Africans are going to have to do as this will only get worse over the next five to seven years according to the energy experts - as that is how long it will take for new power stations to come online. Yes, for those of us who grew up in privileged suburbs who take an uninterrupted power supply for granted, it's not going to be so easy. But we have a choice: moan or find out how to get on with the job with the means at our disposal - see this week's poll on electrified billboards. And thanks to the incredible team at Bizcommunity.com who managed to get out our daily and weekly ezines last week despite power failures at both our Joburg and Cape Town offices and many of our home suburbs - simultaneously in some instances by some horrible quirk.
Have a deLIGHTful week! Louise Marsland, editor: editor@bizcommunity.com. All marketing news to: marketingnews@bizcommunity.com. Responses to this column welcome on our blog: http://blog.bizcommunity.com.